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- Amazon is instituting new seller policies that are designed to make shopping easier on the site.
- The policies include new rules around titles for listings, requiring price-per-unit information for some consumables and details about compatibility for phone cases.
- Collectively, these changes seem to be designed to universalize the experience of shopping on Amazon and to make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for.
- Amazon Marketplace is an important — and growing — part of Amazon’s retail business.
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Amazon is making its website a more consistent place to shop.
The e-commerce giant has announced in recent weeks that it is instituting new rules for sellers to abide by. The new polices, which were announced at different times, collectively seem to have one goal in mind: make shopping on Amazon easier to do.
On April 26, Amazon announced that starting June 12, sellers must include price-per-unit information for all listings — both new and existing — that include a consumable. Sellers must enter a value for how much of an item there is and what unit the figure is in, whether that is ounces, pounds, grams, or total count.
Products in the beauty, make-up, health, dietary supplements, baby food, grocery, and shaving cream categories are all affected by the change.
This information was previously optional.
Amazon announced on June 10 that it will be requiring sellers listing phone cases or accessories to also include compatibility information. This means that sellers will have to list exactly which models the item is compatible with in text, and not rely on photos of the item or other means of identification. This could make it easier for customers to see at a glance if the item will work for them.
"You will be required to provide phone model compatibility information on your wireless accessory product pages," by June 19, the company said in its seller forum.
Finally, Amazon announced on June 17 that starting July 22, listing names, otherwise called ASIN titles, that don’t comply with Amazon’s rules will be punished. Listing names shouldn’t have emojis in them, for example.
Listings that aren’t compliant will now be near-impossible for customers to find in the search function on Amazon’s website, as Amazon will suppress them.
"This is because our research shows that the ASIN titles that violate our policies result in poor customer experience," Amazon wrote in a seller-forum post.
Taken together, it is clear that Amazon is taking consistency in its seller listings seriously.
"We’re focused on great customer experiences and working in partnership with sellers to deliver those experiences," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider in an email.
Amazon Marketplace now accounts for more than half of sales on Amazon’s website, and it is outpacing first-party sales.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in his annual shareholder letter in April, "To put it bluntly: Third-party sellers are kicking our first party butt. Badly."
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Source: Business Insider – dgreen@businessinsider.com (Dennis Green)